


Assembling Their Philosophies

by plinys



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 12:17:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3767878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She never liked keeping secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Assembling Their Philosophies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/gifts).



She never liked keeping secrets.

Not since she was a little girl.

While the other children would like and say that they “fell” when the teaches asked about the bruises blossoming over their cheeks, she would grin up at the principal with a split lip and say, “I punched him in the face,” without a hint of shame.

It got her in more trouble than it was worth.

Those childhood stories of presidents that never lied and princesses who followed every rule, never mentioned the split knuckles or long hours spent in a classroom after school’s finished scrubbing at chalkboards until she’s learned her lesson.

They tell her to stop starting trouble like it’s just that easy. 

Whatever lessons she’s supposed to have learned goes over her head, and instead she narrows her eyes and fights for her believed injustices.

“It’s not lying if you don’t say anything,” her mother says, while running a comb through her blonde hair to braid it back away from her face, “just keep your mouth quiet, Barbara, could you do that for me?”

“It’s not that easy, mom,” she’ll insist in turn, but her words are predictably ignored.

Still she makes promises that she will try, for the sake of the worried look on the woman’s face when she meets her daughter’s eyes in the bathroom mirror, if nothing else.

There was a certain irony to that years later, as she signed her name in sloppy letters, _Bobbi Morse_ this time not _Barbara,_ and swore to keep other’s secrets like they were her own, locked tight to her chest where nobody could find them.  

Signing herself into the service of men who could fill up all the words dictionaries with the stories they want to remain hidden, the false headlines and destroyed files, meaning that the real words never get out into the public’s hands.

Little girls that laid out their secrets out like open books didn’t make good spies, so she built up walls in which she could hide behind, until the walls felt familiar.

Until she could feel like she was going through the motions, putting on the act of somebody else and pushing Barbara Morse further and further into the background.

She slips into roles like a second skin, adapted like the best of them, forging new histories and stories that she can hide behind.

Sometimes she looks into the mirror and cannot even recognize the face staring back at her.

Undercover operations become the specialty of the girl who hated secrets.

On a late night, in some city with a name she won’t remember, she tips back a glass of brandy and doesn’t bother to pretend not to be humored by the irony of it all. A smile finds its way to her lips, and it almost feels familiar again.

When she meets eyes with a man across the bar, who has the audacity to ask where her smiles come from, she tells him, “that’s for me to know, and you to find out.”

He’ll spend the next few years trying to figure out all of the reasons for her hidden smiles.

Never being as successful as he must have imagined he would be, that night they sat together in a bar, in a town that would never know their real names.

One day she kisses that man and swears she won’t keep secrets anymore, that there will be nothing between them, ‘ _til death do us part_.

The promise only lasts until she gets her next mission, and holds a file in her hand that reads _classified_ in red bold letters.

“You can trust me,” he’ll say late at night, the night before she leaves again, “just tell me where you’re going, Bob.”

She doesn’t answer, presses a kiss to his lips and moves her hips downwards until he forgets he even asks a question. Weeks later she brings back a model Eiffel Tower with blood drying underneath her fingernails.

It’s easier to let his questions go unanswered, so she can safely say, “I have never been anything but truthful with you,” during their inevitable fights.

But a lie of omission is still a lie.

And when he says, “I know you’re not telling me everything,” she can’t even bring herself to try and object – there’s too many unspoken words between them, words which will inevitably remain unspoken.

She’s not even surprised to find the divorce papers on her desk less than a year later.

There’s no courtroom battle, she doesn’t bother putting up a fight, they’ve fought enough – just signs her name in flourishing script and slides them under the door of his office, before packing her bags.

With her newfound free time, she throws herself into her work, taking even more undercover missions.

Putting herself in reckless situations and ignoring the worried looks shot her way by longtime friends.

“I didn’t get to be one of the best by taking things slow,” she tells them, and it doesn’t feel like anything but the truth.

Then her world falls out of the sky.

She’s on a helicarrier set on a one way course to the bottom of the sea, and there’s only one passenger seat.

A seat that’s been handed to her, a destiny that she doesn’t have the ability to refuse, and her ending sentenced with a few words.

And she lies to herself, says that she’s not afraid of dying, that she’s trainer her whole life for this and there’s no other options. Until there is, a game changer for the woman who had nearly given it all up.

Though changing her plan means more secrets, and when the world is falling apart because the people she’s trusted with her life are holding guns up to their friend’s heads, secrets seem like the worst thing in the world.

She’s always hated them, hated not being able to be honest with those she cared about.

But there was the point of no return, and she passed it too many years ago.

“I’m in.”


End file.
